


Immersive Studies

by tigerbright



Category: Charlie Series - Roald Dahl, Crossover Fandom, Doctor Who, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Genre: Character Is a Time Lord, Charlie's Grandparents Are Tiring, Gen, Human Sociology, The Great Glass Elevator is a TARDIS, Well-Known Timelords Referred To
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 13:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17550815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerbright/pseuds/tigerbright
Summary: Charlie goes to Oompa-Loompa school. But where will he go to university?





	Immersive Studies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosefox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/gifts).



> Mostly inspired by your request that the Oompa-Loompas not be stereotypical savages and somewhat inspired by the fact that Roald Dahl's hometown (Llandaff, Cardiff) in Wales is the setting for Amy Pond and Rory Williams' hometown of Leadworth.
> 
> MANY thanks to Karios for cheerleading, beta-ing, providing canon review for 2nd Doctor, and even the title.

Charlie Bucket was bored. B-O-R-E-D bored.

He knew, because Mr. Wonka had said so, was that he wanted a child to be his heir because an obedient and honest child would learn how to run things just the way that he would run them himself. Well, that was all fine and well, but Charlie was getting older, and his natural curiosity, no longer suppressed by poverty and hunger, was getting stronger all of the time.

It was just SO exasperating. He kept having ideas, and Mr. Wonka so frequently didn’t like them.

So Charlie studied and learned and studied. The Oompa Loompa school was nothing like the town grammar school, and he had a lot of catching up to do to get to where the other ten-year-olds were. He persevered and spent a lot of time in the library. Thankfully, the TV transmission room worked in reverse, so he was able to read books at the proper size before returning them to the library. He and one of his Oompa Loompa friends, Jani, quickly devised a little cart that could run along the service corridors between the library and the TV room, so that Charlie could bring the books back to the library both for help from the Librarian (or the Physicist, or the Macrobiologist…) and in order to return them once they had been shrunk down again. Some of the books even got copied in the Mass Production Room so that he could start filling up his own bookshelves.

The best thing of all, of course, was the Great Glass Elevator.

Mr. Wonka had been telling the truth when he said that the button that sent them "up and out" had never previously been pressed. But the Elevator had certainly been out of the factory before - many times, in fact. 

"Charlie," Mr. Wonka said one day, "the Librarian says you’ve been reading a lot of science fiction."

"Gosh yes!" Charlie said happily. "It’s the only thing that seems to help me make sense of my lessons. If other people have written about this sort of thing, even if only in stories, then surely I can understand someday."

He looked uncertainly at Mr. Wonka. He was grinning madly.

"My boy," Mr. Wonka said, "I don’t think I shall ever need to send you to university! After all, what on earth will you do at a university? With your honest and open face, and your natural curiosity, and your highly-developed sense of intuition, and your extraordinary ability to synthesize knowledge and ideas -- nearly as well as I do -- why, my secrets would be out in no time, and humanity simply isn’t ready for that!"

Charlie had, at this time, never thought of going beyond the Oompa Loompa school. It seemed that he, like so many of the other students, would have to simply keep taking Wonka Vite in order to ever learn it all. Even Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina and Grandma Josephine had started secretly reading his textbooks. (He kept finding bookmarks and notes scribbled in the margins. He got them their own copies, and ignored their protestations that they simply couldn’t understand them, and couldn’t see them anyway, hiding the spectacles that the Oculist had made for them.) Eventually they began teaching an independent study course in the history of Wales and a literature course based entirely around The Mabinogion. 

Grandpa Joe, of course, went to school right along with Charlie. He had been a clockmaker and had built any number of clever things out of clockwork, so the well-ordered factory had been a delight to him. He and Charlie and Jani had their heads together quite a lot, thinking of things they could do. And while everyone was learning, Mrs. Bucket and Mr. Slugworth ran the business end of the factory, the boring things like distribution and sales and figuring out which marvelous invention the rest of the world was actually ready for.

Charlie didn’t say any of that. He said, "Mr. Wonka, could I learn even more at a university than I can here, with the Librarian and the Physicist and the Macrobiologist and the Chemist and… everyone?"

"Well…" Mr. Wonka sighed. "Charlie, the Oompa Loompas are very clever, very clever indeed. But their sociology is a little… dated. Their first experience directly with a group of humans was, after all, with a very small group of spoiled children and their spoiled parents, plus you and Grandpa Joe, of course. And your Grandma Josephine and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina are every bit as bad as those children, more than half the time!"

That, Charlie already knew. They’d even composed a song about Wonka-Vite Day.

"But Mr. Wonka," Charlie said, "if they have such a low opinion of my grandparents, why are they letting them teach?"

"It’s actually required for their Human Sociology core curriculum -- something they need, as noted above! And there, Charlie, lies the problem; the Oompa-Loompas are superior to humans in so many things that they quite forget their own shortcomings. And if your less-adventurous grandparents are their examples…" He sighed.

"You, Charlie, are going to find the solution. First, we’ve got to make a little trip."

=====

The Great Glass Elevator always seemed to glow in the sunset, graceful crystal and gold, basking on the rooftop. Charlie and Mr. Wonka both petted it affectionately before getting in.

"Now…" Mr. Wonka twinkled at Charlie. "I know that I told you, once, that the button that sent us through the roof had never been pressed before, and, that was the truth! But I don’t believe that I ever told you -- no, I don’t think I ever told you -- that the Elevator had never before left the factory. No, indeed -- I wouldn’t have told you that, because while I do leave things out, I never add untruths in. So - hit that green button over there, would you?"

Charlie pressed the green button. Gold beams and crystal windows extended upward and outward, until the familiar Elevator was merely the vestibule of a gleaming needle, pointed upward. He laughed delightedly. Walking back onto the roof he trailed his hand along the familiar gold and crystal sides, seeing no more through the glass than the little room that had taken him and his family to outer space that first time. He could see, just barely, the face of Mr. Wonka, looking as though it were merely its own reflection in the glass opposite the door. He took a deep breath. Don’t get angry, he said to himself. You know he can’t help it. He went back in.

"Mr. Wonka," Charlie said, evenly, "with all of this transdimensional space, why did you make us all crowd into just the Elevator, that first time?"

"I’m afraid I’m a little deaf--"

"Mr. Wonka."

"Well, Charlie, how do you think that huge bed fit into the Elevator in the first place? It wasn’t crowding - not exactly! We all got in, we were all safe, we managed it!"

"Well, perhaps we didn’t need to be visible to the American President?"

"And how would your grandparents have handled that, Charlie? What of Grandma Georgina, who moans and groans and complains so?"

"All of them would have been much happier to know that their nightshirts weren’t visible to the entire Earth!" 

Mr. Wonka’s face fell. 

"Did we even need to be in free fall, Mr. Wonka?"

"Wasn’t it fun, though, Charlie?"

"It was loads of fun. And it even got them all out of bed. But--"

"Charlie." 

Charlie looked up. Mr. Wonka had a tear in his eye, and a quirk in his lip, balanced between one emotion and another.

"Most of my people are scientists," Mr. Wonka explained. "They know everything about time and space, but hardly anything about feelings or friendship. You would think, living for hundreds of years, that we would learn more about feelings and friendship, but we haven’t. So I left. I’m not the only one who left, but I’m the one who found a spot and stayed in it. My friend the Doctor, he goes out and saves worlds. Our old pal the Master goes out and subjugates them. Me, I made my own, rescuing the Oompa-Loompas from theirs and building a new one around them. But even that could only last so long… why, it’s been three hundred years that the Oompa-Loompas and I have been in Leadworth, you know, and the Chocolate Factory is only my second favorite of all the places we’ve had.

"I thought I was done. I thought, oh, I’ll go out and find the Doctor again, maybe before he was stuck in a UNIT laboratory, or maybe when he’s young with old eyes, the way I saw him in the early twenty-teens, finding new Companions just the other side of town from you yourself. But the Oompa-Loompas wouldn’t go with me.

"And then you, Charlie, you came, and you were honest with me, and you had joy and wonder and the best of all humanity, as far as I was concerned. You deserve the best -- the very, very best -- and so we’ve got to go. The Oompa-Loompas will be fine. Your grandparents will be fine. Your mother and Grandpa Joe, bless their souls, will take care of that!"

"So…" Mr. Wonka bounced across the giant room to a console and slammed a lever up, beckoning Charlie over. "What shall we see first?"

"Well," Charlie said hopefully, "you did say something about university? There would be people who thought like me there, right, even if they don’t look like me? Curious brains, willing to apologize, not leaving things out because they think I’ll understand better that way?"

Mr. Wonka had the grace to look embarrassed, and muttered, "Just the thing… of course, no, not them, nor them, definitely not them… ah." He looked up, the twinkle returning. "Just as ordered, Charlie."

The Great Glass Elevator, humming and warbling, vanished away.


End file.
